Let's Talk
Living Theology inthe Metropolitan Chicago Synod
Volume 8, Number 3
Fall 2003
Reclaiming Lament
Four Questions on Lamentation:
Lament and Nostalgia
GabrielJay Rochelle
I. We lamentdeath. We grieve and we mourn. “Blessed arethose who mourn,” said Jesus, “for they shall be comforted.” In this beatitude many people takerefuge. I have heard people call thisthe principal beatitude of their lives.
What are we lamenting? We lament death. Deathmeans change. Death disrupts what wehave come to call the normal flow of our lives. Most of us derive peace from order, from having the furniture ofour universe in place and nailed down. When others in our sphere of acquaintance or influence die, weexperience radical change.
When major public figures die, our world isshattered. Ask those who were aroundwhen President Kennedy was assassinated, or Bobby or Martin Luther KingJr. People can name the places wherethey were, what they were doing, and whom they were with when the news came. We have a deep and timeless sense that wehave been savaged, that pieces of our own lives were ripped from us.
Closer to every adult’s experience is September 11,2001. 9-11 has entered Americanmythology as a number whose very naming brings with it a host of memories of aloss so overwhelming that we cannot make sense of it.
We lament when the fabric of our universe is torn,which is an ancient experience – not limited to Christians at all but universalin scope. The Anglo-Saxons called itthe web of wyrd, for example, by which they meant the invisible fibers thatweave us together with others into a structure that moves through time. We feel a hole in the fabric when someperson or institution or social contract dies. We lament the irreplaceable nature of the person or contract we havelost.
• Is thisthe nature of our lament?
II. In the Bible, the dirge form of poetrycharacterizes lament. Hebrew poetryis metric, and the dirge is three beats to two, so that it sounds like a personwho shuffles or drags one foot in sorrow. The dirge usually begins with the word eikah, the Hebrew for“how,” as in “How could you let this happen?”
We lament our tribulations before the presence ofGod. God is the one whom we importunefor an answer in a time of lamentation. The Lamentations of Jeremiah provide a good example; here thepoet/prophet laments the destruction of Judah and the people’s entry into exilein Babylon.
The prophets use the dirge form to accuse the peopleof sin, but many lamentations are free of judgment and condemnation. The poet laments the drastic nature of thesituation, not the reasons. In thesetexts God is portrayed as both Judge and Redeemer, a stance worthy ofremembrance and emulation in our own times of lamentation. When MLK was gunned down in Memphis, manypeople thought God was absent, but the inscription on his tomb reflects anotherangle of vision: “Free at last, Free atlast! Thank God Almighty I’m free atlast!”
We turn to lament when either our perceptions or ourbeliefs (perhaps both) about what God is up to in the world are dramaticallychallenged. Lament is a blunt way toask what God is doing in the world! Itis the sanctification of the question, “How could this happen?”
I used to wonder why lamentation had virtually disappearedfrom the Christian script. I am nolonger as sure as I once was about my initial belief; namely, that in the lightof the resurrection we are to be happy because death is overcome and,therefore, lament is out of place. Inhis award-winning series on the Civil War, for example, the documentaryproducer Ken Burns showed that common foot soldiers could be eloquent, both indescribing their belief in God’s providence and in lamenting the bitter sadnessand awful destruction in which they were engaged.
Note the symbiosis involved here: in order to lament,at least in any biblical sense of the word, one has to turn to God. You must believe in God as the stability atthe heart of the universe, so that when stability is threatened or challenged,lament arises in the heart. Where thereis no sense of God’s providence, there will be no grounds for lamentation. If we have no sense of God’s providence, wewill expect the universe to act in a capricious and unpredictable manner, andmaybe even that it will always turn for the worst. This is the condition of humanity without God. It is also a description of the nihilism ofour age.
• Doesour lament stem from our faithfulness?
III. Whatlament remains in a godless age takes the form of nostalgia for a time when faith in God gave meaning and purposeto life. Nihilism destroys our sensethat life has meaning and purpose. Weseem to be “riders on the storm” as The Doors sang in 1971: “into this worldwe’re thrown, like an actor out on loan, like a dog without a bone.” People cling to stability, therefore, like araft in the storm of their lives, not because they feel a genuine sense ofloss.
Christians may still lament because the message of theresurrection is, among things, the overturning of death; and when death seemsto gain the upper hand we are thrown into lamentation. Most people, I suspect, lament the lost dayswhen the presence of God was a guarantee for the meaningfulness of life – evenif they are not aware of the content of or reason for their lamentation.
• Are weare engaged in lament or are we simply stuck in the ennui that overtakes mostpeople in this nihilistic age?
IV. Finally,could lament in the churches today be the external expression ofnostalgia? Could it be that we feel and respond to our inner sense ofdeprivation rather than to genuine loss, which is separable from us? That is,could it be that people who are deeply affected by the nihilism of the age areseeking to halt change on selfish grounds?
Many people look to the churches as bastions ofconservation if not conservatism. Thatis to say, people look to the church to hold the line on certain societal moresand customs. Churches change veryslowly, we are told, because they are essentially conserving institutions. But what happens when the conservinginstitution becomes the agent of change? What would happen if, in the words of Dr. King, the church suddenly becamethe headlight rather than the taillight on the vehicle of society?
This is aminefield. Be careful. The questions are, “By what criteria is thischange wrought? What warrant is therefor it to happen?” We don’t want toadopt a knee-jerk response of “I see the church is changing. I’m against it.” But we want to make sober decisions.
Much change has been wrought for good. The churches’ support of the civil rightsmovement was essential to its universal appeal only forty short years ago. By the same token, whatever you might feelabout it, the churches were in the forefront of dialogue about the war inVietnam. And, lest we forget morerecent history, the peace movement born in East German churches flourished intothe eventual destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
We cannot discuss specific issues. This article is on lament. But everyone involved in today’s churchstruggles must look in the mirror and ask questions.
• Do Ihold to the faith that Christ has overcome the world?
• Am Ifighting solely because I see my world crumbling and former stabilities arelost?
• Do Ihave sufficient grounds in my faith for my support or opposition to suchchanges?
• Is mylament grounded in nostalgia or in faithfulness?
Gabriel Jay Rochelle
St. Sophia Orthodox Seminary, New Jersey
Pull quotes:
We lament when the fabric of our universe is torn,which is an ancient experience – not limited to Christians at all but universalin scope.
We turn to lament when either our perceptions or ourbeliefs about what God is up to in the world are dramatically challenged.
Are we are engaged in lament or are we simply stuck inthe ennui that overtakes most people in this nihilistic age?